This marketing update was prepared by Hort Innovation for the February 2019 edition of The Passion Vine, produced as part of the Hort Innovation Passionfruit Fund investment Australian passionfruit industry communications program (PF16003)…

Summer flush

To support the later than normal summer flush of passionfruit this season, public relations and social activities were tailored to ensure timely consumer awareness and demand. This involved:

• Following up with media outlets from previous summer outreach
• Engaging with key influencers and encouraging them to use their platforms to communicate the high supply of passionfruit to their communities
• Leveraging the Aussie Passionfruit social platforms to encourage advocates to purchase more passionfruit during this time as well as posting grower content for greater support. These posts were also boosted to maximise reach.

The activities generated encouraging results, with reach opportunities achieved over a two-week period of:

• 797,790 via traditional media coverage
• 425,209 via social & influencer activity
• Aussie Passionfruit social pages engagement >5%

Summer media activities

As part of overall summer media outreach activities, three new passionfruit-inspired recipes were created to be distributed to media outlets and used on our own social media channels for media coverage during the summer flush. In addition to this, passionfruit hampers were distributed at the end of December to food media outlets to create conversation on Aussie passionfruit during peak season, particularly leading up to Christmas.

To date, Aussie Passionfruit PR activities have delivered 5.8 million reach opportunities, tracking to the 10 million target by the end of the campaign.

Social media

Aussie Passionfruit social media activity continues to attract and engage consumers. Below are the results to date by the end of 2018:

Upcoming activity

Two key activations are in the planning stages to support Aussie Passionfruit in 2018/19:

2019 Sydney Royal Easter Show

Aussie Passionfruit will be at the Tropical Exhibit this year. With over 900,000 attendees each year, the Sydney Royal Easter Show offers an opportunity to reach a large amount of people with Aussie Passionfruit messaging. With an agriculture background, the show is a great environment to showcase a horticultural product.

Passionfruit had a presence at the show with a similar activation in 2017, with great results. 21,400 samples and 40,000 recipe brochures were handed out to consumers over the 2 weeks.

Passionfruit farm tour

This involves taking one media outlet and one influencer to visit a farm which has been tentatively been scheduled for May in the lead up to the winter flush.

A farm tour is a tactic that public relations practitioners may use to educate media and influencers and encourage them to write about a product. The tour will specifically look to convey a set of pre-determined key messages that are delivered through the experience.

In fresh produce, this often involves taking the media to a farm to demonstrate how the produce is grown, picked and packed before being transported to retail outlets. It is an opportunity for the media to get direct access to the growers and hear the stories first-hand.

For any queries relating to the passionfruit marketing program or specific information provided above, please email marketing@horticulture.com.au.